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The First Discovery of the Freewill Problem1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

Pamela Huby
Pamela Huby
Affiliation:
University of Liverpool
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Extract

Historically there have been two main freewill problems, the problem of freedom versus predestination, which is mainly theological, and the problem of freedom versus determinism, which has exercised the minds of many of the great modern philosophers. The latter problem is seldom stated in full detail, for its elements are taken as so obvious that they do not need to be stated. The problem is seen as an attempt to reconcile the belief in human freedom, which is essential if men are to be able to act morally, with determinism, the belief that every event is fully determined in all its details by the sum of its precedent causes. But even the meticulous Moore does not trouble to explore at length what is meant by determinism. He devotes one very short paragraph to the matter, and sums it up immediately afterwards as the view that ‘everything … has a cause’.

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Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 42 , Issue 162 , October 1967, pp. 353 - 362
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1967

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References

page 353 note 2 Ethics, Ch. VI.

page 354 note 1 ‘Gorgias and the Socratic Principle Nemo sua sponte peccat’. Journal of Hellenic Studies, LXXVII (1957), 12–17.

page 354 note 2 Merit and Responsibility (Oxford, 1960), 125–7.

page 355 note 1 Compare similar arguments at 1, 111a 29.

page 356 note 1 Compare the myth of Er at the end of the Republic. Plato seems to imply that character determines choice, but again does not carry the argument through to its logical conclusion.

page 358 note 1 For the fragments of Epicurus I refer to Epicurus, Opere. Introduzione, testo critico, traduzione e note Arrighetti, di G. (Turin, 1960).Google Scholar

page 359 note 1 Companion to the Presocratic Philosophers, (Oxford, 1946), 302.

page 359 note 2 Chrysippe et l' Ancien Stoicisme, (Paris, 1951), p. 187, note 3.

page 359 note 3 Greek Science and Mechanism II', Classical Quarterly, 1941, 26–28.

page 360 note 1 Aulus Gellius, Noctus Atticae, vii 2, from Peri Pronoias IV.

page 360 note 2 e.g. De Gen. et Corr. 315a34–316al.

page 361 note 1 Elsewhere, of course, ananke means something apparently quite different. There is for instance the frustrating kind of necessity, inherent in matter, that results in the production of monsters or the failure of things to develop as they should. In this sense necessity is almost equivalent to chance, a point brought out clearly at De Gen. Anim. IV, 767b 13–But a monster is not necessary (anankaion) with regard to the final cause, but is accidentally necessary (kata symbebekos anankaion).

page 361 note 2 Schreckenberg, H., Ananke, (Munich, 1964), p. 123Google Scholar, accepts that those elements of the Stoic doctrine of fate which involve a chain of causation must come from the atomists. It is perhaps significant too that by the time of Diogenes of Oenoander (2nd Century A.D.) the Stoic term Heimarmene is used to describe straightforward Epicurean determination. (fr. 33, col. III, 1. 9–14)

page 362 note 1 See for instance Kneale, and Kneale, , The Development of Logic (Oxford, 1962) 47–54.Google Scholar